It was at Dhaka in 1968 that the most im - portant conference of the Institute of Architects Pakistan was organised, proc- laiming a new spirit ofarchitecture. In the 60s, there were very few practising an;hi- tects, there were gaps in architectural sensibility, and inadequately trained people with vested interests were operating within the profession, yet there was an agreement among the architects to offer their very best to society.
The involvement of the American trio - Kahn, Rudolph and Tigerman - was due, to a great degree, to Muzharul Islam who saw a need in the vacuous contemporary situation to provide visual and provocative paradigms in the Bengali landSCape. The intention was not too dis- similar to the still-fresh, high adventure o f Le Corbusier at Chandigarh, India. Paul Rudolph was Muzharul Islam's teacher at Yale, and Stanley Tigerman was a close class- friend in the same institution. While stu- dents both Tigerman and Muzharul Islam had resolved to work together someday, and this was accomplished through the comrrusslon of five polytechnic institutes in Bangladesh. Paul Rudolph was invited in 1966 to prepare a Master Plan and to design important buildings of the Agricultural University at Mymensingh. In the overwhelming atmosphere o f national development through primarily Western models then prevalent, the work of these otherwise deeply sensitive architects provides in- teresting insight into the encounter be- tween architectural morphology basically developed in the West and conditions that are often totally different from their original milieu. The most perceptible zones of this encounter were the architectonic and spatial solutions by which spe- cific climatic conditions were tackled, the intelligent exploiting of available materials and technology, and the subsequent abstract sculptural rendering of the artifact in the brilliant, tropical light.
However, the most poignant event would be to invite Louis Kahn to design the capital complex at Shere Bangia Nagar in Dhaka. The decision to make Dhaka a 'second' capital, and to install the National Parliament there, was taken at the Governor's Conference in 1959 by President Ayub Khan, not out of an overwhelming reverence for democratic institutions but as a bid to placate the growing discontent among the Bengalis. Kahn worked on the project from 1965 to until his death in 1973. Construction continued slowly, with a number of interruptions, but was substantially finished by 1982.
(Excerpt from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fe7f/46009ea10667c7c6daa910f3dc326a4afb4b.pdf)
